White Women Before and After the Revolutionary War - Case Study Example

A Woman Before and After the Revolutionary War The woman selected for this project is an average, white woman. She is married, cares for her children at home, and is of the majority faith. She lived before, during, and after the Revolutionary War. As a result, she saw her lifestyle change. In addition, her overall cultural experience changed over some period of time in her life. Her religion, lack of labor contribution, marriage, and other factors played a role in her overall lifestyle change. Let us say that the woman comes from a family that, unlike the average family of the time period of the War, was opposed to slavery. Before the Revolutionary War, it is known that Negro slaves attacked white women like this one, often raping or otherwise assaulting them. According to Frey (2005), “Antislavery is almost as old as slavery itself. Indeed it could easily be argued that the first enslaved person who jumped overboard or led an on-ship rebellion on the Middle Passage launched the antislavery movement.” As far as the home life of the woman, she spent most of her day cooking, cleaning, and caring for her children. She was submissive to her husband, but he did not treat her poorly. He simply expected that she fulfill the traditional motherhood role, and he would in turn fulfill the traditional fatherhood role of the time. He spent most of his day working in the fields on his farm. The food he would harvest he would either sell at market or bring home to his wife so that it may be converted into meals to feed his family. In most of the other families, the labor was performed by slaves, so the burden of working was taken off of the average white woman and she was free to spend more time with her children (Freeman Hawke, 1988; Berkin, 1997; and Taylor, 2002). According to an article that was written by Frey (2005, pg. 1), “Concluding perhaps that the antislavery movement was long on rhetoric and short on action, enslaved people of the plantation colonies attempted to seize freedom forcibly by fleeing to British armies, not in the manner of loyalists, but as revolutionaries eager to join the battle that they believed was meant to end the institution of slavery. Slave uprisings in the South during the Revolutionary period, coinciding as they did with an escalating international antislavery movement, raised a threat that was at once internal and external. The uprisings marked a political turning point in the Revolutionary War and in the antislavery movement.” The woman in this example is in the southern region of the country, which took the brunt of the destruction during the Revolutionary War. According to Frey (2005, pg. 1): The war in the Southern theater quickly degenerated into a civil war of unsurpassed brutality that pitted brother against brother, broke up households, divided families, produced massive destructive of the plantation economy and the slave labor system upon which it rested, and contributed in the postwar period to the emergence of a defensive counter-movement that formed the basis for the construction of the mythic image of the South that would emerge full-blown in the antebellum period. Prior to the Revolution there had been no organized pro-slavery thought, no pro-slavery literature beyond scattered individual writing. But in the aftermath of that war white Southerners began to redefine themselves in relation to black Southerners and to elaborate a defense of slavery that was partly an ideological response to antislavery argument. The Revolutionary War led to a deliberation over slavery in the United States. Before the Revolutionary War took place in America, many Southerners in the country fully supported slavery and owned slaves themselves. They claimed that they needed slaves to work for them so that they did not have to do labor themselves or pay for it. Southerners, with the exception of families such as the one used in our example who were anti-slavery, fought to legalize slavery as hard as they could. The Revolutionary War was fought so that all individuals could be free, regardless of their race or color (Hume, 2008). According to Hume (2008, pg. 1): Before the Revolution slavery was a way of life and the population of slaves start to grow after 1700. However, after the Revolution there were efforts here and there to reduce slave trade. Legislatures in the north abolished slavery over an extended period then in 1787 the Northwest Ordinance outlawed slavery. As a result there were thousands of free slaves in the south, but it did not stop the southerners from having slaves. The tie slaveholders once had with nonslaveholders, such as the Patriots and Liberalists, ended. The nonslaveholders got together with slaves to fight the southerners. This was also true for the woman in our example, as her family was one of the ones that were opposed to slavery and instead chose to do the labor for the family themselves. The woman in our example had a particularly bad problem that she and her family had to defend themselves against. The slaveholder families in the area in which she lived had, after the war, armed their slaves with weapons so that they may fight the nonslaveholders. The slaves were forced to do so and, as a result, the woman’s family was threatened several times. The lifestyles of families like the ones in our example were also changed by the changing lifestyle of African Americans during the period. According to Hume (2008, pg. 1): African American lifestyle changed drastically during the revolutionary era. African American men and women created new lives for themselves. Their population grew quickly between 1775 and 1810. However, the number of slaves that were held captive grew even larger. Many slaves made sure nobody would take their freedom from them by making new names, keeping their masters’ name, changing around their lifestyle, finding new homes and jobs. They also created new communities and new identities as free men and women. Many slaves moved to the city others stayed in the countryside. Many adopted Christianity as their religion and many others fought for freedom for all. Election Day was a day black people could show that they were truly a citizen, a day they enjoyed. The aforementioned lifestyle change was a role reversal of sorts. Obviously, later movements such as the Civil Rights Movement helped to bring slavery to a complete end, so the efforts of the Revolutionary War were not in vain. The woman in our example and her family would be happy to see how things turned out today if they were still around to do so. References Berkin, Carol. First Generations: Women in Colonial America. Hill and Wang, 1997. CGHS, “Slavery in British America: The Revolutionary Era.” CGHS. http://cghs.dadeschools.net/slavery/british_america/revolutionary_era.htm (accessed October 5, 2008). Frey, Sylvia R., “Antislavery before the Revolutionary War.” History Now. http://www.historynow.org/09_2005/historian2.html (accessed October 5, 2008). Hawke, David Freeman. Everyday Life in America. HarperCollins, 1988. Taylor, Alan. American Colonies: The Settling of North America. Eric Foner, 2002. Read More